The election results are in with some surprises. Eric Adams, a former NYPD Captain, was elected mayor of America’s biggest city. In Minneapolis, center of anti-police protests after the murder of George Floyd, voters rejected a proposal to disband the police department. In Atlanta, struggling with a 60% increase in homicides, two pro-police candidates for mayor are heading to a runoff election. And in Seattle, where in 2020 the City Council voted to cut the police budget by 50%, residents supported a wholesale shift away from efforts to defund the police.

To view these results as a repudiation of efforts to reform policing is missing the bigger picture. Increasing crime across the country has highlighted the need for good policing, not the same ole same old. Every good police chief in this country is working to close the trust gap with the neighborhoods most in need of effective and compassionate policing.

Perhaps the election results are a signal to tone down the rhetoric and recommit to the notion of true community policing.